[Ibon]

I can't see a civil war unfolding here. For many reasons. Even in rural states you have up to a 30 or 40% voting democrat. Even in urban areas you have the same percentage voting republican. The split is not cleanly urban/rural just as it is not definable in any real geographical sense. The split is there but the territory is in the mind not out there in geography. So we are forced to resolve our differences.

I see the pendulum swinging at some point toward a desire for unity, a maturing perhaps toward accepting the other sides differences.

Even though this is not a perfect solution I tend to support returning much more autonomy to the states. Allow more regional autonomy in areas today that are not considered very popular. For example, give states the right to legalize or make illegal abortion. Allow states to set immigration policy, to embrace or reject diversity. To provide state single payer health care. Or not to.

The federal government can not legislate the differences that make up this polarity. To take some pressure off the solution would be to give states more autonomy. Citizens that don't like this or that policy can move to another state.

The federal government acts like a choke hold on both sides agendas. It funnels all these divisive issues through federal legislature where bitter fighting is the only result. Give states more autonomy.

[asg70]

There were years and years of negotiation to prevent the civil war. Part of that was framing the slave issue in terms of state rights. It didn't work. I think left/right polarization has become irreconcilable.

[Cog]

Most people on the right wish to be left alone, which is why you do not see us doing mass demonstrations for the most part. However, if the left insists on enforcing their vision on us, then some very bad things are going to occur.

@EnergyUnlimited

I'm a bit disappointed in you mate in that you don't think I've studied how insurgencies, counter-insurgencies, and civil wars work out. Whether we are talking about French, Polish, and Yugoslavian partisans during German occupation, the Spanish Civil War, the Viet Cong, the Taliban, or the Cuban revolt against Batista, they share a common tactic. You never go up against the pointy end of the spear unless you wish to be impaled upon it. That happens much later when you have military parity with your opponent. There are much softer targets during a rebellion. Whether that be politicians, media, etc, those are the ones who are targeted first for elimination during a insurgency or revolution. Most people during a rebellion/civil war, insurgency don't even own a weapon. They provide material support or intelligence to the ones who will do the direct action.

So in other words you won't find Cog going down in a hail of bullets, knee deep in hot brass. Give me some credit man for thinking about all of this ahead of time. There are much more clever ways to get your point across to those who would wish to enslave you into their socialist utopia.

[asg70]

^^^ Homeland security would have a field day in this thread.

[asg70]

[snip]

[Cog]

^^^ Homeland security would have a field day in this thread.

Why should they? There has been no direct threats against the Homeland. This is just theory for now. But the left has consistently threatened to murder any white person, particularly if they voted for Trump. Apparently we are all Nazi's or Klan members. If Homeland Security wants to target anyone they should target Antifa/DSA and anyone who supports them.

[Cog]

For whatever reason the left, who were making steady progress towards their utopia, has went balls deep in their advocacy within the Democrat party. Maybe the election of a capitalist instead of a criminal scared them. Don't know. Every single Democrat raised their hand when asked if they supported free health care for illegals. Almost everyone of them support reparations for slavery, open borders, the elimination of ICE, free college, student loan forgiveness, free stuff.. ad infinitum.

So your choices could not be more stark in 2020. You can vote in socialism but you can only shoot your way out of it. That is your choice. I'll just sit here and make my plan no matter the outcome.

[Newfie]

Ibon,

My old neighborhood is 100% Democrat, the Republicans could not even muster a pill watcher, they had to borrow a Democrat. Seriously.

In Philadelphia the only elections that matter are the primaries, R’s have zero chance of getting elected.

[dissident]

Americans are going to have to learn the hard way that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

And beware self-declared "progressives" offering cornucopias of free this and that. Such people always have another agenda. And it ain't your welfare.

[mmasters]

New movie coming out soon called "The Hunt" that shows elites hunting "deplorables" for sport. This has to backfire.

https://m.theepochtimes.com/movie-showi ... yebiDnoK5M

[gollum]

Cog is most certainly right about how civil wars go down. Expect a lot of targeted killings and not too many guys making their last stand in their back bedroom. Think Argentina style dirty war as opposed to some walking dead fantasy. I guarantee he isn’t the only one thinking this out in his mind right now. Two politically motivated mass shootings in less than a week, one could argue that the hot heads are already starting to act, it’s always the John Browns and the Gavrilo Princips that get these things going. The Hitlers of the world are the exception and not the rule.

[careinke]

I just watched the documentary "The Great Hack." It left me with lots of things to think about. I strongly suggest everyone watch it. It brings up major concerns about privacy, data collection, sales of data, individualized targeted advertising, and even psyops on individual voters in the 2016 election and the Brexit vote.

The film is from a left leaning perspective but the info is VERY interesting. For instance one company had over 5,000 data points on every american voter. Where you shop, what you do, what movies you go to, where you eat, and at least 4996 other data points....for every voter in america. With that data they could identify who they could turn and specifically targeted those individuals with a personal propaganda campaign.

They asked why they didn't work with the Dems. The answer, well they didn't buy our services

Although I did not agree with some of their conclusions, and some of it was obviously staged, there were certainly multiple layers to this documentary.

[dissident]

I just watched the documentary "The Great Hack." It left me with lots of things to think about. I strongly suggest everyone watch it. It brings up major concerns about privacy, data collection, sales of data, individualized targeted advertising, and even psyops on individual voters in the 2016 election and the Brexit vote.

The film is from a left leaning perspective but the info is VERY interesting. For instance one company had over 5,000 data points on every american voter. Where you shop, what you do, what movies you go to, where you eat, and at least 4996 other data points....for every voter in america. With that data they could identify who they could turn and specifically targeted those individuals with a personal propaganda campaign.

They asked why they didn't work with the Dems. The answer, well they didn't buy our services

Although I did not agree with some of their conclusions, and some of it was obviously staged, there were certainly multiple layers to this documentary.

Yet somehow only Putin was able to organize a magical targeted clickbait ad campaign that won Trump the election with less than 80,000 (including every repeat) pro-Hillary and pro-Trump ads. I guess Putin must have 5001 data points on every American voter and that one additional point made him succeed where all American ad pushers failed. That one point must be the exact per-individual recipe that enables total hoodwinking. The problem is that there clearly weren't millions of customized ads to enable this trick to work...

This documentary merely highlights the reality: the prime manipulators of US elections are Americans. Such data can be used to customize campaigns from electoral district to district. All those billions of dollars spent on campaigns do have a long term impact. They have resulted in the development of finely tuned machinery for influencing the vote. Trying to fob this off and spazz about foreign meddling is just intellectually insulting.

[Newfie]

I’d like to hear KJ’s take on this film.

Contrary to normal we watched it today.

The think it’s good that it educates folks to mistrust their data sources. But has it not always been so? When could we truly florist any of our newspapers? And why did they ignore MICROSOFT data mining from our computers? Or our banks and credit card companies? Or Google? Etc.

I have a well earned reputation as a skeptic and curmudgeon. The thing that probably scares me the most is the power of a well oiled, ill informed crowd. Nasty, deadly beasts.

BELIEVE ONLY HALF OF WHAT YOU SEE AND NOTHING YOU HEAR - "Question everything, especially rumors. The proverb has been traced back to 'Proverbs of Alfred' (c. 1300). First attested in the United States in 1770. In 1845, it was used by American poet Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49)." From "Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings" by Gregory Y. Titelman (Random House, New York, 1996).

https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_boa ... es/47.html

[Newfie]

Here’s a quote from a book I’m reading “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.”

In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self-destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war’s grip. It takes a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to remain numb. The world outside war becomes, as Freud wrote, “uncanny.” The familiar becomes strangely unfamiliar—many who have been in war find this when they return home. The world we once understood and longed to return to stands before us as alien, strange, and beyond our grasp.

.....war was the ultimate drug experience. It was the chance to taste extremes that would, he hoped, bring about a catharsis or obliteration. In times of peace, drugs are war’s pale substitute. But drugs, in the end, cannot compare with the awful power and rush of battle.

Are we in the honeymoon stages of war when it all lols so clear and obvious, that we are high on our righteousness? Will this addiction to the high push us further and further over the edge?

[Outcast_Searcher]

Even in rural states you have up to a 30 or 40% voting democrat. Even in urban areas you have the same percentage voting republican. The split is not cleanly urban/rural just as it is not definable in any real geographical sense. The split is there but the territory is in the mind not out there in geography. So we are forced to resolve our differences.

While I'm sure this is generally true, at least in my area of central KY, there seems to be a MAJOR difference between what people are willing to advertise being, re election signage, and whether they are rural or city.

Take the 2016 POTUS election as a recent example.

In my city of Lexington (ranked about 60th in the US, over 300,000 pop.), I noticed the lady who lives across the street from me had Trump signs up for several months. She was about the ONLY Trump signs I saw in the Lexington suburbs, vs. democrat signs pretty much everywhere I looked.

Now, you get 10 minutes or so outside the city, into rural areas like farms or small towns, and it was largely the opposite. Trump signs plastered all over, and hardly ever a democrat sign to be seen -- especially in the countryside. And I was taking some drives in the country, to think and relax, so I saw a LOT of the rural roads around my city, week after week in the spring/summer/fall of 2016.

...

I realize this is an anecdotal data point and that I'm asking you to take my word for what I observed.

I think it PERHAPS goes to a deeper divide as per mindset than perhaps the raw numbers of dems vs. repubs. show.

And perhaps I'm completely wrong, but it did cause me to raise my eyebrows until I got used to it.

[Newfie]

Outcast,

I observed the same thing in PA. Philly 100% Hillary, suburbs mixed, rural PA 100% Trump.

To be honest in my many miles or driving I saw one Hillary sign, the legend was “Lock Her Up.”

[asg70]

Here’s a quote from a book I’m reading “War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.”

I would argue that apocalyptic movies and doomers jonesing over the prospects of doom (aka the zombie horde) is also a high. It reflects a desire to get back to an exciting time when life and death was around every corner and therefore every move you make takes on a lot of meaning.

[asg70]

I
The think it’s good that it educates folks to mistrust their data sources.

Blind trust AND blind MIStrust are equally damaging. The mistrust has caused Alex Jones style paranoia, AGW denial, mass-shooter denial, etc...

[asg70]

...finely tuned machinery for influencing the vote.

It's just part of a larger continuum that goes back a long-long-way. Remember this historic ad?

Humans really aren't so complicated that it requires big data to figure out how to manipulate them. Just appeal to their fight or flight impulses.